We tuned in to the latest episode of the illegal immigration drama this week and saw a tantalizing subplot – a supposed crackdown on identify theft.

But considering that none of the 230 meatpacking-plant workers nabbed in Minnesota was actually arrested for stealing anyone’s identity, I’m recommending a rewrite.

Of course, all the actors played their roles perfectly. Federal agents enforced the law of the land. Immigrant-rights advocates denounced the raids and bemoaned the impact they would have on children left behind.

And we’ll see you next week at the same time on the same channel. This sad spectacle – catch, deport and repeat – will continue until we find a better solution to the vexing immigration dilemma.

“I don’t know how you really fix something like this, but a wall is not the answer,” said Emilio Munoz, a retired U.S. Customs agent from the Twin Cities who worked on high-profile criminal immigration cases. “The raids are curbing some illegal immigration. But for every person you deport, there’s another that will take his or her place or is already here. This is not going to stop.”

Like every good drama, this one has its share of villains and heroes, pawns and victims, tragic figures and conspiratorial power players pulling strings behind the scene. The problem is that everyone thinks they know who’s who, depending on their viewpoint.

For Jay Foley, the undocumented immigrant population in this country is playing a gradually greater role in identity theft problems. “It is undoubtedly a significant problem,” said Foley, co-founder and director of the nonprofit Identity Theft Resource Center in San Diego, which helps ID theft victims clear their names.

In some stolen Social Security card cases, victims don’t realize someone else is using their number until the IRS comes calling to ask why a chunk of income wasn’t reported, Foley explains. Other identity theft situations have led to people declaring bankruptcy, losing insurance coverage or spending years trying to correct the problem.

“These things are tedious and annoying and time consuming and there’s a good chance that it can also be financially devastating,” Foley said.

Foley sat Wednesday with Seth Gonzales, who was forced into a cameo role of victim. The parents of the 18-year old San Diego resident took out a Social Security card in his name, unaware that someone swiped it around the time Gonzales turned 6.

The impostor, a woman Foley said is a suspected undocumented immigrant, obtained a license and landed work in the state of Washington as a nursing home assistant. Her license was later revoked for providing inadequate care.

Gonzales and his parents learned of the ruse only when the youth tried to open a bank account two years ago. He was turned down because the woman had also defaulted on bank accounts and passed off bad checks.

“A factor is that the (Social Security Administration) does not check to see that the benefit is being collected from the right person,” Foley said. “They just care that it’s being collected from a legitimate number.”

Gonzales said he is in the middle of trying to convince the government to issue him a new number, and contemplating a name change.

Back in Minnesota, Father Lawrence Hubbard of Sagrado Corazon de Jesus church in South Minneapolis sees this sorry opus from an economic, as well as a political, perspective.

“There is a law beyond the law,” said Hubbard, who says he hears nearly daily from his largely Latin immigrant population about home raids and deportations here in the Twin Cities. “And when a law is not just, the people have to change it.”

One of Hubbard’s main villains, as he sees it, is the failure of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. The agreement’s intent was to stimulate economies in Mexico and Latin America. Instead, as Hubbard sees it, it allowed American companies to export without tariffs cheaper products en masse. Local producers, from the small farmer to the business owner, could not compete. Those who benefited most from the agreement, Hubbard argues, were the business elites in Mexico and Latin America.

“When you lose your livelihood, or can’t adequately feed your family, and people in power are holding all the wealth, what do people do?” Hubbard asked. “They will risk their lives. They will cross borders.”

One thing’s for sure. Unless we deal with this issue with honesty and effective policies stripped of politics, posturing and packaged rhetoric, the show will go on.

Rubeacute;n Rosario can be reached at rrosario@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5454.

From smoking crack in a Harlem drug den for a front-page exposé to covering the deaths of 86 people in a Bronx social club fire, Rubén Rosario spent 11 years as a writer for the New York Daily News before joining the Pioneer Press in 1991 as special correspondent and city editor. He launched his award-winning column in 1997. He is by far the loudest writer in the newsroom over the phone.

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